But he did hunt down and torture former HYDRA bigwigs for information in the process of enacting his plan, and specifically found out about that program to create Russian super-soldiers. He might at least be a good place to start following leads.

I guess so. I was not so impressed with things this time ( wait, aren't they hiding? why are they at this party? ). I'm still loving the characters and the story, just... I didn't feel like it made sense exactly. I just don't buy that Sam can impersonate someone else well enough to fool someone who's actually met that person.

And this is incredibly nit-picky, but... really, Sam? Did you think the Winter Soldier and Zemo would be confused by the mention of Riga?

Oh so complain-y. There was a lot of pretty, they definitely advanced the plot, they made whats-her-name both more and less sympathetic... I'm still very much on board! I just found it uneven.

Uneven is a good word for it.

Yeah, that was... odd. I'm easily confused and there were a lot of logical leaps, and also none of my questions about who is funding Bucky and Sam were answered. Under whose authority did they get to visit Zemo, much less help spring him?

And am I to expect that Steve Rogers never once reached out to Sharon after she got caught up in the bullshit after Civil War? She was Peggy's niece or something.

That said, they definitely set up Sharon as a kickass occasional ally.

And now I'm totally stoked that the Dora Milaje are back. I almost wondered if Shuri herself would show up...

That was... not good, in my opinion.

Clearly the spycraft stuff is being written by people who haven't the slightest idea how any of that would work. And Zemo is somehow current on info about black market dealings half a world away from where he's been imprisoned for... checks calendar... TEN YEARS?!?

Also, barons aren't "royalty," it's a title of nobility that indicates a landowning vassal of a monarch. Basically some ancestor of his would have been the Sokovian equivalent of a plantation owner.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Honestly, it felt more comic-booky than usual, but in ways that just don't work off the page.

FYI: I don't think anything here is really spoilery, in case anyone wonders. Except I did smile at dancing Zemo.

The thing is, exploring actual consequences for the blip is the sort of thing that I love in fanfiction but which really worries me in canon. When fans say, "wait, did people who'd been on a plane pop back in mid-air?" it's an interesting plot hole, but I can say, comic-book logic, I'm sure it's covered (surely they thought through the more obvious problems?). If the canon has consequences like that, then the Avengers, rather than being superheroes, have made a really flawed decision based entirely on one person. That's realistic, but it's not superhero discourse.

Anyway, they haven't quite gone there yet, it's just something that's been worrying me. And the mix of "bad guys are chasing them... then they go to a party" comic-book-ness and "disease in overcrowded resettlement camp" real-ness is, I think, what unsettled me about this one. I feel like late Buffy gave me some of these feelings, too? Maybe?

On the other other other hand, I'm actually really interested in exploring the consequences, I'm just worried they haven't established which kind of world we're in.

I have more ridiculously overthought thoughts, but I'll save them. They have to do with self-published shifter romance pitfalls and thus deserve their own post.

Yes! I am interested to see where they are going but I do not have faith that I will be pleased to get there.

One of my questions is who are the people in the camps? Because I get the sense that at least some of them are people who didn't get dusted, and then after Endgame, the original owners of their homes came back and evicted them? Because Karli keeps talking about how things were better during the Blip: she's representing the ones who didn't go away. But those people are less likely to have been dispossessed or turned into refugees than returnees would be.

I admit I want to read some thoughtful fanfiction about the bureaucratic & legal hurdles of handling the returnees.

Consuela, I agree, they seem to be implying that dustees were privileged over survivors, which is interesting.

Watching YouTube breakdowns (in the absence of live humans to discuss this with) I've discovered that a disease-based subplot was erased once the pandemic started, and both Mama Donya and Nagel scenes were erased/altered because of that. Maybe that's part of what made this episode feel off. On the whole I judge work based on what I see, not what was behind the scenes, but it makes me feel better to know there may actually have been a reason.

Um... possibly spoilery for something no longer in the show? Anti-spoilery? "the earliest of plot leaks and speculation all shared in common the idea of some kind of device unleashing a pandemic across the populace ... Disney could be trying to get ahead of a potential disaster with rewriting and reshooting some of the series, with a heavy emphasis on the first couple episodes." [link]

ETchange italics tag to spoiler tag. Ahem.

Honestly, the very idea of Sam Wilson, former rescue ops soldier, (basically former) Avenger, blowing his cover because he forgot to put his phone on silent is just sloppy fucking writing. This is not Three's Company.

And jaded art thief Sharon Carter just makes me desperately want a crossover with Leverage.